Seclusion

A woman decides to sell her weekend cottage: originally meant as a family summer home, it became a place of solitary retreat after her divorce. Now it is time to  turn a page and to take a last look at everything that transpired within its walls. 

Seclusion is an exploration of being right and being wrong; of searching, arriving, and eventually moving on. It balances the tension between leisure and labor, the rhythms of gardening and nature, and the shifting tides of love, family, and parenthood. Menasse examines what time does to us and how our inner landscapes evolve. Ultimately, it is a novel about happiness, that  elusive state we often "only recognize as it is passing." 

The prose is a virtuoso display of subtlety and beauty, sprinkled with Menasse’s trademark essayistic observations. It is both the story of one woman and her home and a condensed, impressive post-reunification panorama that tackles life's heavier questions.

"[A]n epic achievement that ought to take its place as an essential text of European literature" - The Times Literary Supplement on Dunkelblum